Thursday, November 29, 2007

Busting the "LSU is Uber Talented" Meme

The most commonly-deployed argument against Les Miles right now is that he is benefiting from ludicrous amounts of talent bequeathed to him by Nick Saban and he's merely rolling a collection of future Pro Bowlers out onto the field to do their thing. As this nifty post from the ostentatiously-named blog Blue reveals, that simply isn't the case. LSU's starting lineups on offense and defense are not especially loaded with blue chip recruits. In fact, LSU starts exactly one five-star player - Early Doucet - and Doucet has been injured for much of this season, as has LSU's best defensive player, Glenn Dorsey. (Thanks, Auburn!)

For the record, here are Nick Saban's 2003 and 2004 classes that were both ranked in the top two and are allegedly the source of Les Miles's success at LSU. Do you see a bevy of five-star recruits who are causing the Tigers to win this year? Do you see analogous talent to what Pete Carroll has assembled at USC (and Carroll has the same record as Miles in 2006-7)? Put another way, do you see classes that haven't been adequately replaced by Miles's subsequent classes?

3 comments:

I could be totally missing the point, because you are correct, there aren't a lot a "5 Star" recruits.

But I do see four first round draft picks and a handful of other players currently on NFL rosters from the 2003 class and nfldraftcountdown.com has 6 players from the 2004 class on its top 100 list.

That's pretty strong recruiting. And this is coming from the world's biggest Saban hater.

I think looking at that list is a testament to how much talent comes from LA. For the record I think Miles is a good coach and has recruited well, but that is a Top 5college job because you can lock up the state and pick out of SE Texas and Mobile.